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Saturday, June 05, 2010

So You Wanna Be a Filmmaker
Zacuto hosts Part Deux of Ron Dawson's series on becoming a filmmaker, and in this episode he discusses the pros and cons of working as a subcontractor, or "growing your own studio."Zacuto: So You Wanna Be a Filmmaker – Part Deux by Ron Dawson

Lens Correction for Video is Photoshop CS5
Richard Harrington shows up at TipSquirrel.com with a short tutorial on using the Lens Correction filter on both Stills and Video:

The Lens Correction filter can also be used on DSLR video files. This is a useful way to remove lens or geometric distortion. When your’re done, you’ll need to render the video file back out of Photoshop (File > Export > Render Video).

Richard also pops up in the latest episode of D-Town TV to talk about tools to monitor your video while shooting on DSLRs (loupe's and monitors.): D-Town TV: Episode 40

Garrett Brown and the Steadicam Tango
Cinema5D has a short interview with Steadicam inventor Garrett Brown where he talks about the upcoming Steadicam Tango, a Steadicam with a jib arm. Still no word on actual availability or price yet - and I'm sure I won't be able to afford it! - but it looks very cool!
Cinema5D: Cinema5D Interview With Garrett Brown Cine Gear Expo 2010

Making It Look Like Film
Videomaker has an overview of the many techniques used to make video look like film; from frame rate and shutter speed, to depth of field, filters and lighting.Videomaker: Making It Look Like Film

James Mathers gives a DPs perspective on DSLRs
Cinematograhper and co-founder of the Digital Cinema Society James Mathers has written a piece on DSLRs for NewMediaWebinars.com. He opens with the quote "To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail," and then proceeds to describe the history, and list all of the shortcomings of using DSLR's for shooting films and video. But he hasn't come to bury Ceasar:

I’ve mentioned a number of shortcomings, but to be honest, these are mainly just the result of using the camera to make professional motion pictures, a use they were never really designed for. Yet with all these “deficiencies,” there must be a reason they are in such demand, and that is simple; they make awesome images.

New Pansonic LUMIX G-Fisheye lens
Panasonic has announced the LUMIX G Fisheye 8mm/F3.5 lens, H-F008, with a 35mm camera equivalent 16mm lens, for the LUMIX G Series, DSL Micro (DSLM) cameras. The ED (Extra-low dispersion glass) lens minimizes chromatic aberration and distortion and has the ability to capture extreme close-ups due in part to its advanced inner focus system. The seven blade aperture creates a rounded shape that produces an smooth out-of-focus areas when shooting at larger aperture settings. The stepping motor allows for smooth and silent focusing in both photo and movie recording modes.
Price and availability is not yet known.
Panasonic: H-F008

James Cameron at D8
CNET's Live blog of James Cameron at the recent D8 conference. Cameron talks about Avatar, Titanic in 3D and the BP oil spill...

Most of the work I do as a director doesn't have to do with 3D. The 3D should be viewed as value-added. Everyone said you had to see "Avatar" in the theaters, in 3D. But the DVDs have sold really well. If people have the choice, they use 3D. If they don't, 2D works fine.

Chrome adds WebM video
Hardly a surprise as Google just announced the open video standard WebM, but Google has now released a new developer version of Chrome with official support for WebM.ReadWriteWeb: Google Chrome Now Supports WebM Video Format

Tonight at 6pm at the Boylston Street Apple Store, Taz Goldstein of HandHeldHollywood.com will take an in-depth look at the latest apps and filmmaker accessories that can turn the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch into powerful production tools.

If you can't get enough of bad movies, check todays broadcast of OnPoint [11AM EDT], which will be on "Judging the Worst Movies Ever." OnPoint is broadcast on a lot of public radio stations, or if you check back with the website tomorrow you can hear a webcast of the show.OnPointRadio.org

New Support for 64-bit Video Editing Applications. Boris RED 5 will support Adobe CS5, CS4, and CS3 under 64-bit and 32-bit Macintosh and Windows operating systems and Sony Vegas 9 under 64-bit and 32-bit Windows operating systems.

3 Way Color Grade Filter provides a professional color grading process complete with three custom color wheels for pedestal/gamma/gain adjustment.

New Noise Reduction Filter smoothes out video noise using spatial and temporal information derived from the video clip - especially in dark areas of an image.

New UpRez Filter for high-quality SD to HD conversions, facilitating the resizing of image clips while minimizing the data loss that is usually associated with resizing media in a host application. The UpRez filter includes several high-end image processing algorithms to enhance the sharpness and smoothness of the final result.

New Pixel Fixer Filter removes bad pixels resulting from a faulty digital camera sensor or dust on a camera lens. Up to 10 bad spots can be repaired with a single filter application - without any degradation of image quality or sharpness.

New DV Fixer Filter softens or removes diagonal stair-step lines from a clip captured with a lower-quality camera - without degrading image sharpness or quality.

New MatchMove Filter allows users to combine motion tracking with transformation and compositing of a layer. Users can lock the movement of one image clip to another image clip using Boris RED’s built-in motion tracking capability.

Boris RED 5 will be available in Q3 2010 for an MSRP of $995 USD. Owners of previous versions of Boris RED may upgrade for an MSRP of $295 USD. Customers who purchase Boris RED 4.3 as of June 2, 2010 will be eligible to receive a free upgrade to Boris RED 5.

Thursday, June 03, 2010

Canonrumors.com reported a couple of days ago that a "hybrid" camera might be coming in September, though they had no details of what that might be.

Today they're speculating it might be a 5D Mark II replacement, as there is a $500 rebate on the camera in Canada right now. Unfortunately, US buyers only get $100 off... [B & H $2,399]

I think it's a bit of a leap that the 5D Mark II replacement would be billed as a hybrid camera; a true hybrid camera would require some body and functional changes that would - probably - move it away from the SLR design of the 5D. And the last rumor was that the Mark III wouldn't be out until next year at the earliest....but then we're dealing in rumors here.

They are also reporting that a 60D is on the near horizon, though on May 31st there was a report that there would be no 60D...

Graham Sharp from AV3 Software demoed their phonetic search tool ‘get’ at last weeks Boston Final Cut Pro meeting. It was a pretty impressive demo.

‘get’ is an application, though within Final Cut Pro it acts like a plug-in. You set up a watch folder, and any media placed in that folder will be analyzed and indexed phonetically. The program can index any audio media that Final Cut can understand. Indexing is fast; an hour of material can take as little as 10 seconds.

The search is purely phonetic; you can type out the words you are looking for phonetically, and it will find them. Note: this is not a speech-to-text tool. Evidently the phonetic analyzer was originally written for the military, and is licensed to AV3 Software.

The demo was quite impressive; searching for multiple word phrases, as well as short words like “the,” worked seemingly perfectly. There’s also a drop down called Score that can be used to adjust the accuracy of the search. Graham demoed searching through some “good” audio, as well as some fairly quiet audio clips and the searching seemed unfazed. There’s probably limits to how well it works with really noisy background audio, but in those cases the clips probably wouldn’t be useful without captioning anyway. When asked, he said they haven’t tested to see if it works with music!

The interface is fairly simple; type in what you’re searching for and the clips that match are displayed in a list. Clicking on a clip opens a preview window that starts playing the video at the first location of the matching word(s). A timeline indicates other matches in the clip, and you can jump between matches in the clip using the left and right arrow keys. You can go up and down through the clips list using the up and down arrow keys.

You can narrow the clips you want to search in, and also build Boolean searches. If media is stored on an external drive, the search will still find the clip, though it will tell you the media is not available.

Once you find the piece you’re looking for, you can “Send It” to Final Cut to be added to the Project (the final version will also send it to the Timeline.) The demo was alpha software, so he was unable to demonstrate setting in and out points, but that feature will be available in the final release.

‘get’ only works in Final Cut Pro at the moment and it’s expected to ship in the second week of July. It will cost $499, but you can “register” at their site and get a 10% discount at launch. There will be a 10-day trial version and it will ship with seven languages.

This looks like a really promising tool for the documentarian dealing with lots of material.

If you're interested in stop motion, animation, etc., the music video J'ai pas le temps / I have no time by Carlos Lascano is simply amazing. It was shot using a Canon 7D, and high-lighted in the recent Great Camera Shootout - Part 3.

Now they've posted a making-of video, and I'm really glad they did as it turns out it wasn't made in quite the way I had imagined. I thought it was all stop-motion, but while some stop motion is used, much of it was done by shooting puppets in front of green screens, and then compositing layers. It's a very clever technique - and a great time saver! Awesome!

It seems to be the rage to run video/film making competitions. Make a video, write a script, everyone's doing it. Heaven's, I've even been suckered into entering one or two for the fun of it.

But sometimes, you have to wonder what's really going on. Take the latest one from American Express in partner with the Tribeca Film Festival. The My Movie Pitch offers a grand prize of your "pitch idea will be turned into a short feature film....complete with a dream indie budget." Only problem is, it's somebody else's dream!

Read a bit closer, and you find that, the 60 second video pitch is the beginning and ending of your involvement; the film gets made by "movie professionals selected by Sponsor." Read the small type and you find that the winner has absolutely nothing to do with the film:

Short Film: Sponsor, in connection with Tribeca Enterprises LLC, plans to bring the Grand Prize Winner’s Movie Pitch to life by making it into a short film (of up to approximately 40 (forty) minutes) (“Short Film”), to be produced and directed by movie industry professionals selected by Sponsor. Grand Prize Winner will have no input on any aspect of the Short Film. [emphasis mine] Complete details will be provided at time of Grand Prize notification.

So you make a 60 second pitch, and get your friends to vote for it...and what you really win is a trip to New York. And a computer/camera/and editing application valued at $3,500. Where's the fun in that?

I'm tempted to pitch a movie about some guy that wins a competition, someone else steals the prize, and he spends a miserable time in New York alone...except that such a pitch might contravene at least two of the hundred or so competition rules:

3. (e) Cannot defame, misrepresent or contain disparaging remarks about Sponsor or its products or other people, products or companies;

3. (h) Cannot communicate messages or images inconsistent with the positive images and/or goodwill to which Sponsor wishes to associate;

Wednesday, June 02, 2010

Always be careful to first copy any source material your client gives you from their thumb drive to your media folder before adding it to your Final Cut Project. Otherwise, when the client leaves with their thumb drive, you'll be surprised to find that the [audio/video/images] stops playing!

Boinx Software has announced the release of FotoMagico 3.5 a tool for animating and manipulating still images. This release adds new plug-in support for Apple Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Express, Motion and Adobe After Effects. The native plug-in integration allows videographers and motion graphic artists to animate still images and render directly within the host applications.

FotoMagico 3.5 Pro (including PhotoPresenter 4) is available today for $149 USD. The update to FotoMagico 3.5 is free of charge for existing FotoMagico 3.x owners at their current license levels. Existing FotoMagico 2.x owners at their current license levels can upgrade to FotoMagico 3.5 Pro for $89 USD.

In writing about the Zoom H1 earlier, I said that because it lacks XLR inputs the recorder was less appealing to me. Which is not to say that it's not going to be a good and useful product, it's just not something I see using for most video applications.

But it's been pointed out that you could use an XLR to 1/8" stereo adapter, and then use the H1 with good external mics. This is true, but it's not something I'd personally recommend. Generally, the more cables and adapters you have, the more likely you are to have trouble; you can't find the adapter, it's not as secure a connection, it's two connections instead of one. It all seems like trivial stuff, but it does impact what you're doing.

I've used 1/8" adapter's prior to getting both a camera and a recording deck with XLR inputs, and there really is a noticeable difference in the way things just seem to work better. In fact, I now shy away from using anything but the XLR inputs whenever I can.

If you're going to the trouble of carting along some good mics, then I'd get a larger recorder with XLR inputs, rather than get the H1 and an XLR adapter.

But if you just want a small, compact recorder, and you're going to use the on-board mics on the recorder rather than other mics, then the H1 may be the thing for you.

H.264 and VP8 Compared
Jan Oxer at StreamingMedia.com takes a first look at VP8 compared to H.264. His initial conclusion; VP8 does pretty well, matching or slightly outperforming H.264 in low motion clips, depending upon the background, but H.264 does better in high-motion pieces, though the differences are probably not even noticeable in most applications.StreamingMedia.com: First Look: H.264 and VP8 Compared

New iKan ID 400
iKan describes the ID-400 as the perfect ENG-style remote-controlled lighting unit, which comes complete with remote, lighting unit and stand, and one set of tungsten flood bulbs. The bulbs are interchangeable and can be changed easily in the field. Other bulbs including daylight, spot, daylight flood and tungsten spot are sold separately. In addition to standard AC power, the LED Box can also be powered by optional Professional Battery Packs, using the Professional Battery Plates.
The unit costs $499, and additional bulb sets are $129.ikancorp: ID 400

This Friday, June 4th, 6pm at the Boylston Street Apple Store Taz Goldstein of HandHeldHollywood.com will take an in-depth look at the latest apps and filmmaker accessories that can turn the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch into powerful production tools.

Steve Jobs spoke at the D8 Conference last night, and had a few words to say about the Apple TV (and Google TV, etc..)

...no one wants to buy a box. Ask TiVo, ask Roku, ask us... ask Google in a few months.
[...]
The only way that's going to change is if you tear up the set top box, give it a new UI, and get it in front of consumers in a way they're going to want it.

Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Zoom has announced the H1, a digital recorder for $99! With 24-bit/96kHz recording to included 2GB microSD it looks pretty cool, and they even show it being used on top of an HDSLR camera. You just have to wait until the end of July for delivery.

BUT, there's no XLR inputs [of course not with something that small!] and while having something small and compact is appealing, frankly, I'd rather use the Zoom H4n and plug some good mics into it, but that's just me...

A few months ago I bought a VholdR ContourHD 1080p Wearable Camcorder ($309 Amazon) with the intention of sending it up in a kite. That hasn't happened yet, but I did buy another accessory for it and have been putting it to some good use.

The VholdR 2800 Windshield Mount Kit ($39 Amazon) is actually made by PanaVise, but has a mount on the top designed for the ContourHD camera. You slide the camera into the metal rails, and then tighten two screws on the bottom of the mount to keep the camera in place. The camera bracket is metal, but the rest of the arm and mount is plastic, which - along with the camera - keeps it light. I'm a little concerned about the long-term survivability of the top ball joint. My suspicion is that it's the part that's most likely to fail, and it's the part on which the camera mount spins and provides most of the positioning flexibility. However, the lightness of the ContourHD itself may help the longevity of the mount.

Since I hadn't put the ContourHD to much use prior to getting this mount, this test was as much about learning how to use the camera, as it was about using the mount.

Positioning the camera is helped by the laser targeting; which shoots two laser beams to give an indication of the direction that the camera lens is looking. It gives you an idea of the center of the lens, but obviously not the field of view. You have to guess with that; or take test shots and then remove the memory card and view what you're capturing on a laptop. We guessed.

The camera/mount worked surprisingly well attached to the outside of the car, though having done this test shot, I now want to move the camera further down and shoot more "forward" to show more of the road. Note that though the video doesn't show it, while shooting on the road we had a safety line running from the camera mount to the car in case the mount came loose. A big advantage of the ContourHD is that it is small and light, making it both less likely to fall off, and also less likely to cause damage to the car - or others - were it to come loose.

The ContourHD has a surprisingly wide field of view, which is particularly noticeably inside the car. The video is fairly compressed, with compression artifacting clearly visible in places, though I don't find it objectionable. The color of the image from the ContourHD looks very good too; more accurate than the video shot in the car using a Sony Handycam that was shooting in auto white balance mode. (None of the footage in the sample video was color corrected.)

Audio, however, is very poor. You can barely hear what's being said, even inside the car while relatively close to the camera. Most of the audio in the car segment comes from the Sony, not the ContourHD. At the end of the clip there's the audio from the ContourHD -boosted in Final Cut by 12db - followed by the Sony cameras audio with zero boost. There's a noticeable difference! So if you want audio, you're going to need a second system.

Some of the footage taken with the camera looking through the windshield suffers from intermittent reflections of the dashboard in the windscreen. This was another thing that wasn't noticed until we'd finished; though note that the footage taken with the second camera is even worse!

The VholdR 2800 Windshield Mount costs $39.00. Alternatively, you could buy the Panavise 809 Camera Window Suction Cup Mount ($23 Amazon) with the standard mount, and the VholdR 3100 Universal Mount Adaptor ($19.99 Amazon) which would allow you to attach the ContourHD to the standard mount. That combination is four dollars more, but you could use the 809 with other cameras, whereas the VholdR 2800 will only work with the ContourHD. Personally, I like having the VholdR mount; the ContourHD attaches very securely to it, and it's firmly attached to the windshield mount. I suspect that it will be slightly more secure than using the universal mount. If you're planning on shooting a lot with the mount and the ContourHD, I'd recommend getting the specific mount; but if you're only going to play a bit, get the standard mount so you can use it with other cameras.

Unless otherwise noted, these events are held from 10am to 12 noon at Rule's Boston office. For more information, check Rule Events page (which is not yet updated!)

Jun 2: Multi-camera Live Productions
Covering communication devices, recorders, sources and switchers for live multi-camera set-ups in the studio and in the field.

Jun 9: Monitor Solutions for Field Shoots
Field monitors (both on-camera and on-set) to address composition and critical focus issues as well as solutions for wired and wireless client viewing stations.

Jun 16: HD-SLR Cameras as the New Production Weapon
Highlight tools, accessories and specific applications for the Canon line-up. Also, engineering staff will be present to perform free firmware upgrades.

Fresh from the problems with the Flash-to-iPad conversion, Adobe has now announced a software viewer that let publishers create digital versions of their documents created in Adobe Indesign.

For those that haven't been following, Apple has already banned an Adobe technology that converted Flash movies into an iPhone/iPad runtime on the basis of it using links to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool, a process that Apple now prohibits.

It appears that Adobe's latest technology binds content with a viewer application (the application, since it's written using the Apple toolkit, wouldn't be covered by Apple's prohibition on the Flash conversion tool.)

It will be interesting to see what the viewer app will support; maybe it'll play back Flash movies!

HDSLR Talk Radio show!Planet5D is considering an HDSLR talk radio show:

All it takes is for someone to use Skype (something everyone can install and it is free from around the world!) to call me during a specified time and I’ll answer the calls. And I will also have some stories prepared to discuss when there aren’t any questions coming in (just like the talk shows do on the radio). I have all the equipment set up now, I have a Skype ID (planet5D), and now all we need to do is schedule the time.

And now an HDSLR stabilizer
Jaybilizer has a Merlin type stabilizer for HDSLR cameras that costs just $200.

The Jaybilizer is constructed of high quality steel and 6061 aluminum, with a heavy duty steel ball gimbal. The 8″ counterweight bar also acts as a tripod for easily setting down and storing the Jaybilizer. The Jaybilizer HDSLR is an affordable alternative to other expensive stabilizers